You know what I love? A bloody good side scrolling beat-em-up. Us fans of the genre have been starved of a good brawler for years now, but in one corner of the globe we have a stalwart hero, namely Vanillaware, who are probably most famous for developing the Odin Sphere series. In Dragon's Crown Pro they have prettied up their original 2013 release to a full 4K and added a wonderful orchestral soundtrack by Hitoshi Sakimoto. And by golly doesn't it look beautiful and sound lovely.

Dragon's Crown Pro looks like a gorgeous fantasy painting come to life, with everything animated perfectly and with style. One sticking point for many could be the character design by George Kamitani (who also previously worked with Capcom on Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom), yes the female characters are, shall we say blessed, with cracking top bollocks and bountiful bottoms, but this is equal opportunities fantasy bodies, with the guys also being clad in not much and rocking perfect pecs and dreamy deltoids. I personally love the style and it's very well realised.

Of course all this is for nought if the game plays like dragon dung, but fortunately Vanillaware have nailed what they were obviously going for, this is Golden Axe for the new age. There are six classes to choose from, helpfully designated as beginner are the Amazon and the Fighter, the Elf and Dwarf require a little more skill, and then you have the Wizard and Sorceress requiring the most skill and knowledge of the game mechanics to use.

Once you have chosen your protagonist the story awaits, well I say story, there's not much to it but it does contain lots of baddies to mess up and lots of sweet, sweet loot to nab. That's right Dragon's Crown Pro manages to squeeze some full on RPG mechanics into your beat-em-up. You'll be gaining levels and XP, managing your equipment and weapons, and even finding allies bones which can be resurrected to help you in your battles or given a burial which leads to helpful bonuses.

After you've ran through the story a few times the game doesn't stop giving you thing to do, there are nine dungeons which feel very different to the story when you take them on, and a massive endless mode called the Tower of Mirages in which the enemies become steadily harder the more you progress. You don't have to attempt this alone either as the co-op modes also allow connection to people playing the original 2013 version on their PS3's or Vita consoles. You can even upload your old save if you had one of those earlier versions and carry on where you left off.

Dragon's Crown Pro is a title I missed out on the first time around, so I'm absolutely overjoyed to play this wonderful gem that brings the old school fantasy face punching genre bang up to date, and with so much content to get through you could still be playing when they update it to 16K.

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